Network appliances, such as a network attached storage (NAS) device, have been available for a while, but most if not all of these do not provide access to documents in a secure and protected manner or allow for rapid location and retrieval of such files. Instead, the NAS devices enable multiple computers to share the same storage space at once. Thus, these NAS devices implement a data-centric storage model but are more concerned about disk storage space availability than they are about file management.
Enterprise content management (ECM) systems, on the other hand, provide a formalized means of organizing and storing an organization's documents and related content. ECM is an umbrella term covering document management, web content management, search, collaboration, records management, digital asset management (DAM), work-flow management, capture and scanning.
Enterprise content management, as a form of content management, combines the capture, search, and networking of documents, usually together with digital archiving, document management, and workflow. As part of ECM systems, a document management system (DMS) is used to track and store electronic documents and/or images of paper documents, including a versioning capability (history tracking). The primary reason for a DMS over a file sharing system such as an NAS is to improve the sharing and auditing of business documents.
A problem is that as users continue to use their computer systems, the numbers of files created, accessed, modified, and lost grows. The benefits of data file management systems are well known but many, if not most, of the ECM document management systems are expensive, complicated, or both and most of the NAS devices are not adapted to provide true document management.